The Minnesota Wild traded Pat Maroon to the Boston Bruins on Friday, in a move that adds (currently injured) ring cred to the bottom six of a Stanley Cup contending roster. Meanwhile, the Wild bring back a conditional 6th round pick and Bruins top-10 prospect, Luke Toporowski.
When Michael Russo (The Athletic) first tweeted that Toporowski was coming back in the deal, he carefully used “take” instead of “get” as his verb of choice, “#mnwild take forward Luke Toporowski back in the Maroon deal”.
When I saw that, I figured there was nothing to be overly excited about, when it came to Luke Toporowski. But I did some digging anyway, and came out a bit surprised by what I found. Most major outlets didn’t have Toporowski among their top Bruins prospects entering the season, but one site that follows Boston’s hockey prospects closer than most others is “BlacknGoldHockey.com“, which had Luke ranked as their #7 prospect in the system entering 2023-24.
I started looking for more information on Luke Toporowski, after checking out his statistics over the last handful of years. After surprisingly going undrafted in 2019, Toporowski returned to the WHL, where he played the season prior, and absolutely blew up for 60 points (29 goals, 31 assists).
